Unpaid Interns Negatively Impact Diversity in Congress

After graduating with honors from Ohio’s Baldwin Wallace University, Aziz Ahmad was offered a fellowship in 2016 from the Muslim Public Affairs Council, an advocacy and public policy organization. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a recent political science graduate. Ahmad, who says he comes from a lower middle-class family, would enjoy a busy summer accessing the networking motherlode of Washington, DC while garnering valuable experience and attractive bullet points for his résumé.There was only one problem: DC is among the nation’s 10 most expensive cities, and Ahmad would have to rely on his savings and a $1,500 stipend offered by the

One Reply to “Unpaid Interns Negatively Impact Diversity in Congress”

The larger conversation includes the right to adequate housing for all working class people. For this specific issue, it would be in the public interest to subsidize housing for our intern and congressional staff populations. There is a great history to low income housing being financed by workers collectives, socialists organizations and religious groups. We need to ensure that regular people can participate at all levels.